


A World-Unworld

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [156]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Magic, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Resurrection, Spoilers, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 23:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14483454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: There is darkness. There is red like blood. There is blue like the sky at twilight. There is water, a vast expanse, spreading on and on and on and on.She floats. She stands. She…issomehow, in a way she should not be.Around her, she sees many more.





	A World-Unworld

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this was written listening to the instrumental for _No More Heroes_ by Aviators. The WIP title, if you would believe it, was _Fuck you Marvel. Die in a ditch_.
> 
> Aich was angry and bitchy-feeling.
> 
> Hopefully this fic will ease some of your Emotions after seeing AIW. Please leave comments and if you want to talk to me, feel free to drop by my [tumblr](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/).

Death… is freedom. She feels herself fading and gives into it, lets it consume her. So much gone from her, so much lost or taken or given up.

Parents dead. City gone. Brother killed. Vision dead by her hand and then by Thanos’.

Death consumes her and she feels nothing but relief.

 

* * *

 

There is darkness. There is red like blood. There is blue like the sky at twilight. There is water, a vast expanse, spreading on and on and on and on.

She floats. She stands. She…  _ is _ somehow, in a way she should not be.

Around her, she sees many more.

 

* * *

 

They walk. Float. Swim. Stand. The world-unworld warps around them.

Is this death? She does not feel dead. She cannot see Vision anywhere, cannot  _ feel _ him.

If this was death, surely he would be here too?

She looks at the faces around her - not all of them are even human. Giants stride behind her, and people who rise barely to her knee. Spiders climb and centaurs and trolls and ogres and creatures she has no names for.

They are all walking the same way. 

Wanda stretches out her mind and tries to find what they walk towards.

 

* * *

 

Gamora sits in the gateway. The water-not-water rests beneath her. When Thanos came, half-unmade by all he had done she was still a child in form - a child as she had been when first he found her. A child here - new to this not-death-unlife. 

She’s found her place here. The knife he gave her rests in her grip, her hair is plaited back into a rope of braids as her mother’s had been.

 

* * *

 

Wanda pushes forwards. Those around her stumble but her scarlet catches her step, launches her up into the realms of the flying. There are bat-things here and dragons and creatures which simply float and fly. There is Sam, his wings outstretched and soaring.

“Wanda,” he says. “What- where are we?”

Wanda looks towards the horizon, catches her falling arc with another beam of scarlet. “I don’t know,” she says. “But that gate. That is where we must go.”

 

* * *

 

The pace is unrelenting. T’Challa reaches out a clawed hand and catches Bucky when he stumbles, Bucky reaches out his new-made arm to catch T’Challa when he trips. The water is light around their feet, barely there, and they forge onwards, pace unceasing.

 

 

* * *

 

“Where are we?”

_ -confusion, anger, uncertainty- _

“Fo’ tem di’agra?”

“What is this place-”

_ -loss-sorrow-mourning-curiosity- _

“So melda?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Sid no me zhlotosta.”

“Chrisadach te?”

_ -fear. fear- _

“How-”

“Gohan-”

“What happened-”

“Was ist?”

“The Titan-”

“Rex.

“A’larsson.”

_ -fear-hate-dread,nonononononono!- _

“Vonteg.”

“World-render.”

“Thanos-”

“Thanos-”

_ -Thanos-- _

“Thanos-”

 

* * *

 

Mantis sprints from the crowd, hurls herself at Gamora like a cat on prey but wraps her in an embrace and  _ weeps. _

“He killed you,” she sobs. “He killed you.”

Gamora holds her close, holds her tight and nods. “He did. He killed all of us.”

 

* * *

 

She is not the first that he killed for the stones, but she is the first whose death was tied so intrinsically. Her soul for the soul stone. The soul stone does not forget. All the lives it takes, all the lives it is given… they are homed and housed.

Gamora was the first it took into itself. Now, now it houses half a universe.

 

* * *

 

“Mourandeen gach!”

“Where are we!”

_ -home, loss, mother, sister, WHERE- _

“Ab seer an chreesda!”

“What happened!”

“Fordegh an chritax!”

_ -pain, confusion, self-dust- _

“Zhiichrix zheelachikto!”

“What the  _ fuck _ is going on!”

 

* * *

 

Wanda spots Bucky, points him and T’Challa out to Sam. They dive low, skim alongside them and touch down. 

“You-”

“We were all unmade,” Sam says. 

“What is this place?” Wanda asks.

“Another realm,” T’Challa says. “I have… I have been in a place like this before. But that housed the spirits of my ancestors. This… this houses everyone who died by Thanos’ hand.”

“Not everyone,” says a new voice.

 

* * *

 

Gamora does not know these people but something about them is familiar. They are not soldiers - well, three of them are not soldiers - but they have unusual tech and Mantis seems to think they have some importance. The kid following Mantis like a lost puppy seems to recognise them and that’s enough for her.

“Not everyone,” she says. “Just me onwards.”

 

* * *

 

“We were disassembled,” Wanda says. “Unmade.”

“I was a sacrifice.”

“Vision,” Wanda whispers. “Is he-”

Gamora shakes her head. “If he was unmade, yes. Otherwise no. The soul stone only takes those it itself destroyed.”

Some further fragment of Wanda’s heart is lost.

 

* * *

 

The people are gathered in huge circles. Same species seek same species, where languages are shared discussion rages between them, arguments, debates and speculations and a thousand billion languages.

“We’re in the stone,” Wanda says.

“Yes,” says Gamora.

“It’s like the spirit world,” says T’Challa.

“Yes,” says Gamora.

“Like the places between realms,” says Strange, cloak flapping at his shoulders.

“Yes,” says Gamora.

“I can feel everyone,” says Mantis.

“Me too,” says Wanda.

“So…,” says Parker. “What… what do we do?”

Scarlet coils at Wanda’s fingers. Bucky’s vibranium hand curls into a fist. Sam stands taller, T’Challa’s hands flex claws in and out. Drax’s knives still and Mantis’ antennae flex. Sigils swirl at Strange’s fingertips.

“We have to get out,” Gamora says. “There are more of us than there is Thanos. We are inside one of the stones, held by the gauntlet. If we can free ourselves within the stone, use our souls to take it as our own-”

“We can claim the gauntlet,” Strange says. “Change it to our purpose.”

“Undo what he did,” Wanda says. “You mean-”

“Everything,” Gamora says. “And then end him as well.”

 

* * *

 

The space is mapped. Strange warps holes in whatever unreality they now exist in, finds friends amongst the millions around them, others with skill in the mystic arts. Together they map the stone, probe the space. Skills are shared and powers pooled. Those with open streaming minds link and link and link until a web of minds meets a web of power and the stone is held together by minds and magic and empathy.

They are knit together in some great weave of the world-unworld-

“Of reality,” Gamora says. “Maybe now-”

_ Wanda? _

 

* * *

 

Vision is half a ghost. He is not- but he is-

Wanda reaches out a desperate hand to cup his cheek but meets a chill of air. His hand chases along her cheek but all she feels is a wind.

“How-”

_ The stone. I was it. It was me- _

Wanda nods, tears falling.  _ When he took it- _ her mind whispers to his. “When he took it,” she says. “You became a part of the weave as well.”

_ I exist yet. _

 

* * *

 

“A body,” T’Challa says. “It’s still there?”

_ More than that, _ Vision says.  _ My mind. Shuri had mapped almost all of it. They might make me, or a version of me- _

“With that,” Gamora says, “It could undo all Thanos did. An undoing of what he did.”

“An opening,” Mantis murmurs. 

“A loose thread in the weave,” says Strange.

They glance around, look each other in the eye. Wanda’s mind, linked to Mantis’, linked to every other telepath and empath in the realm, linked to the sorcerers and sorceresses. Mind after mind, eyes after eyes, they look to each other and they hope.

“What happens if we pull?” asks Sam.

 

* * *

 

They wait. Long and slow they wait. The world is mapped. Their powers all intertwined. With Vision drawn to them they try to reach out and probe the other stones but to reach beyond the bounds is hard - in any other stone they seek to see they are the same faded ghosts as Vision is to them.

They wait. They watch. A mystic and a telepath are always on watch, always reaching out, tapped into Space or Reality or Time, waiting and watching.

They wait. They wait. They wait.

 

* * *

 

_ Today. _

The whole stone breathes out at the word. Every interlinked mind, every broken hope, every piece of every person lifts up. 

Hands reach out. Claws reach out. Paws and fists and fins and tentacles, minds and emotions and magic, and everyone interlinks, every soul finds another and holds tight.

The world-unworld warps.

The world-unworld changes.

The world-unworld strains.

Every mind, every magic, every reaching hand lifts and leans towards their hope of exit. Vision is fading in their midst and Wanda reaches out a hand, coils scarlet beyond all knowing to keep their link, find their friend, find their way home.

_ Now, _ Vision says.

He is no more.

Tears fall but Wanda does not let go. The scarlet reaches on and reaches out. At her side Strange’s magic reaches on. The mystics at his sides of a million different powers, of thousands of means, of every school reach out with them. Mantis’s mind sings, emotions strong and shining. Drax at her side is weeping and laughing, T’Challa’s hand in hers is firm and tight. 

They reach. They hope.

They lift.

And the world-unworld around them shatters.

 

* * *

 

They fly free. A thousand billion souls with no bodies to house them but does it matter? They are free. The stone is shattered. They flock to the stones around theirs - mind for mystics and power and space and time. Strange sinks himself into green and surges upwards, Mantis loses herself in the shattered shards of Soul and holds it together enough to give them lasting strength. Wanda warps into scarlet, scarlet her scarlet, and finds the threads of Reality. T’Challa finds Power, and wields it like a king. Sam and Spidey, Peter and Drax all reach into Space, try to guide their ways home. Vision rises from the gold-glow of Mind and minds interlink and souls and hope and dreams and all their power.

A thousand billion souls, trapped in a gauntlet, trapped in an infinite stone.

A thousand billion souls, refusing.

A thousand billion souls, singing out in anger and surety and certainty of their victory.

The gauntlet shatters. The stones shift.

The world warps.

The world-unworld is gone. The unmade-world resists for but a moment.

They tug the thread and the tapestry of reality shivers.

They tug the thread, and every miswoven piece of weft and warp falls away.

And they are home.

 

* * *

 

They are a thousand miles apart and a million and a billion and a thousand million, a thousand billion, they reach across galaxies and nebulas, across all the known universe, the reach they created inside the stone, the reach they needed to live and now, now free, now embodied, they reach on.

They find the minds they found as kith and kin and kind, and mark them on their maps. They find their minds and their magic, and mark their ways home.

 

* * *

 

There is a gasp of shock. Strange twists his hands, calls the magic and shows Wong the stone, safe and secure and tucked away.

 

* * *

 

There are screams of joy and of laughter, blue sister reaches for green and they swing in a circle and laugh like they are girls again.

 

* * *

 

Vision, remade Vision, not quite the old Vision, goes stock still.

“Captain,” he says, soft and certain. “I think we should go outside.”

There they find a world once unmade once more remade.

Friends, standing before them once again.

 

* * *

 

Wanda feels the unworld-world beneath her feet, the water once lapping at her ankles and feels it recede. Feels the world welcome her back into the place she never should have left.

Vision awaits her, hands reaching out. 

Beyond him, friends await. Family awaits. Future awaits.

 

* * *

 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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